Handgun Review: The Beretta U22 Neos

It is a semiautomatic with a fancy stock and a pistol grip and it does look mean, especially with that scope on top. But look closely at the trigger area in the center.

That’s a pistol. It’s the Beretta U22 Neos. The stock and elongated barrel are part of the kit that Beretta offers to turn the pistol into a carbine rifle. The kit does not make the pistol any more powerful, though it and the optional scope can help you fire it with greater accuracy.

Not that an increase in accuracy is needed. I had the opportunity to fire a Neos at a local gun range recently and found it be extremely accurate right out of the box.

The Neos is Beretta’s latest entry into the .22 caliber semiauto handgun market. Without the carbine kit, it comes in three different models. Two are solid black, while one sports silver styling on the grips and the barrel. It also comes in two barrel lengths, four inches and six inches. It is manufactured entirely in the United States, in Accokeek, MD. That’s 10 miles outside Washington, DC. Here is the silver-styled model.

The first noticeable thing about the Neos is that it’s a very good looking weapon, typical of all Beretta products. The second thing you may notice when you handle it is the way the grips fit and how well the weight is distributed. The grips feel absolutely perfect in my hand, which speaks well of Beretta’s attention to ergonomics. The six-inch model feels a little bit front heavy to me, while the four-inch model feels perfectly balanced. It feels like an extension of your hand.

8 Comments, 4 Threads

1.
Still Waters

…the Neos can make a fine concealed carry firearm.

Please don’t even think about carrying that gun!

The .22 long rifle round, even in its higher velocity iterations with lighter hollow-point bullets, is not an effective crime stopper: it simply doesn’t deliver enough momentum to halt a criminal’s predations with any realistic hope of reliability. If you’re concerned about being swarmed by marauding bunnies, the .22 long rifle could well deliver enough force; if your prospective attackers are two-legged, however, or dogs, the .22 long rifle is grossly insufficient.

Do I mean the .22 long rifle can’t be harmful or even fatal? No, not at all. I mean it doesn’t deliver enough physical force to stand much chance of halting a criminal in mid-crime or a dog in mid-attack. The minimum calibers I always recommended to students were:

If you have severe arthritis or other hand problems, carry the .22 long rifle and hope for the best, but be prepared to empty the gun into an assailant, reload, and empty it again if needed.

If it’s of interest, the Neos is the third iteration of a High Standard design dating to the 1960s. It includes a striker mechanism rather than a hammer and firing pin, and doesn’t include a grip frame. High Standard sold it as the Duramatic 106 and private-labeled it for J.C. Higgins (Sears) as the Model 80. It was reliable and relatively inexpensive to manufacture, but failed to sell well: the trigger was terrible, and the plastic grip felt peculiar to many shooters. Colt later issued a better looking version of essentially the same gun, and likewise failed to achieve success with it. Beretta has finally succeeded with the design, though the trigger pull tends to be heavy and is often gritty. It’s a good enough low budget plinker and informal target gun, but a woefully inadequate self-defense firearm.

I suggest we see if a law can be passed to ‘normalize’ some small part of our gun control laws to match some European standards -but only those that legalize silencers for common use with no paperwork and get rid of minimum barrel length as well as overall length requirements!

I tend to agree. Although having worked with such stocked pistols as the Mauser M1916 (“Broomhandle” variant in 9 x 19mm), “artillery” P.08, FN P-35, and etc., I have to agree with whoever it was who said,

A shoulder stock transforms a decent pistol into an indifferent carbine.

As for suppressors, I think the Europeans have the right idea, for once. The less noise, the better, purely on grounds of not annoying the neighbors.

As for people who want “silencers” for nasty purposes, any half-competent mechanic with access to a machine shop can make an effective one in about an hour and a half. I know, I’ve done it. (Legally, BTW, with registering and everything.)

I’ve also seen them made from aluminum baseball bats, with radial holes drilled through to a central linear “pipe”, wrapped with foam packing sheet secured with “100-mph tape”, and then threaded onto the muzzle of an (equally illegal) Uzi 9mm SMG. (This setup figured prominently in a series of drug-related murders in LA a few years back.)

If even that’s too much trouble, 2 liter pop bottle + styrofoam packing peanuts + duct tape = one that will hold up for a few shots, at least. On the front end of a 9mm, no less.

As with any weapon, if nasty people want it badly enough, they’ll get it, or make it, laws be damned.